After cranking through several books in December and January, I relaxed a little in February. The slower pace wasn’t intentional…really, I just got distracted learning how to knit socks. Now, I have to fit a few rows of knitting into my 45 morning minutes. Really delays the pace of reading. Smh, hobbies be hobbying.
Anyways, for the month of February, I’ve been reading The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste and A View of the River by Luna B. Leopold. The Shadow King is my novel for Ethiopia. I’m about halfway through, and liking it so far. It takes place during WWII, during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. I don’t know anything about that section of WWII, having grown up in the US and therefore more familiar with the European theatre and the Pacific theatre (did you know the Japanese used a strategy called Island Hopping?). There are some intense, although not graphic, sexual scenes in this novel, so it is one you want to be prepared to read.
A View of the River is far slower paced. It’s something like a very short textbook and contains charts and graphs showing various river characteristics, such as bankfull flow vs. drainage area, how floodplain terraces are formed, et cetera. I picked it up because I’ve decided to get [more] serious about my career and you know, spend a little extra time outside of the work day getting the big picture view of things. As is typical with textbooks, some sections are easier to read than other sections. But on the whole, A View of the River is moving along with a good, steady flow.
Since we’re already six days into March, I’d better get these wrapped up pronto. Easier said than done when you have your regular job, a ceiling to fix, miles to run, dinner to eat, a cat to be fed (and cat vomit to be cleaned up). But it’s the little things in life, bits of progress every day, and there is no rush or schedule to finish these books. Moving forward, I’m finding books for countries along the route of United Airlines’ Island Hopper…I’ve been feeling those end of winter winters and vibing to the Moana soundtrack and thinking about travelling through the warm skies.
Tag: aesthetics
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February Reading
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Serious Things and Substack
I guess most people blog on Substack now. I like what I have here and I don’t want to switch to Substack. I’m suspicuous of Platforms(TM); although, arguably, WordPress is a platform. I’m not going to put a server in my basement or get an AWS account though (alternatives to Substack or WordPress), so here we are. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
I think when it comes to blogging, or writing in general, it’s easy to feel like everything one writes must have a “big point.” High school me could not write an essay without worrying about the eternal fate of humanity. Usually a piece of writing should have a point, unless your point is that some things don’t have a point, but there is a difference between a Point of Cosmic Significance and just Something Nice You Observed. Furthermore, the Something Nice You Observed doesn’t need to segue (segway?) into a Point of Cosmic Significance. The friendly chirping bird in your backyard can be a reminder of God’s creation without also being a reminder of the Persecuted Church and How People Are Sparrows (TM) the Awful Evolutionists (TM) the Problems with the Government (TM) and The Meaning of Life (TM). Whoa, that escalated quickly. Maybe, more on that later, maybe.That idea though – the idea that all writing must have some giant, cosmic point – has definitely crippled my writing in the past. The second I start to write, I get a thousand whirling thoughts of things that must be said write now. I start arguing against myself. I imagine all the criticizers and what they are going to criticize. At the same time, I feel like my writing is cliche and boring, what could I possibly have to say that noone else has said, there is nothing new under the sun, nobody will be interested. I go around and around in circles without ever actually writing anything. I am pretty good at finding Big Reasons Not to Write.
And you know what? All those reasons suck. It is easy to criticize. It is hard to create. Data is cheap these days. Little words have little meanings and a lot of them are lovely. -
The End of Aesthetics
I think the brief Internet Trend Age of curated aesthetics is ending. It’s pretty disappointing; after all, what is more satisfying than a Pinterest board full of assemblies of objects that give “Ravenclaw” or “Dark Academia”? Not much. I dig a Dark Academia aesthetic day.
Before I moved to the city on the prairie, I thought a lot about aesthetics. I was living in a time of transition. Based on what future job my partner chose, I could have moved to the Southern Great Plains, the Upper Midwest, or stayed in a college town in Indiana. I sat in my favorite coffee shop and wrote a bunch of garbage which I’ve copied and pasted below.
Now I’ve seen a couple Tik Toks which rightfully attach aesthetic to Capitalism, saying that we promote and keep this aesthetic thing going by buying shit to live our aesthetic. This idea is especially prevalent with the “eclectic grandpa” and “bookshelf wealth” aesthetics, two aesthetics which boil down to doing a variety of things you’re actually interested in and displaying books you’ve actually read. These Tik Tokers criticizing aesthetics as a tool of capitalism (and other stuff, please, just watch the Tik Toks on your own, this is a blog, not going to find a bunch and summarize them) are right, but damn if it doesn’t make me feel kind of sad.
This article says that it’s “ok to mourn the death of social media,” and I kind of feel the same way about this aesthetic curation situation. I’m glad that people are criticizing the “image-ness” of aesthetics. But there’s a sixteen-year-old inside me that still gets excited when I see a Ravenclaw aesthetic board and I feel a little sad that it feels stale. I feel a little sadder to know that the image feels stale because aesthetics have been over-produced; that is, I’ve consumed so much digital content that I’ve been forgetting to do stuff. So all in all, it’s better that people are criticizing these online aesthetics, and the more we move on and do our own stuff, the deeper and better our personalities and relationships will be.
Idk though, a couple years ago I visited an AirBnB near Point Pelee, Ontario. It was a small add-on to a small house on the shores of the Lake. The decorations, random books and items, were from all around the world. The house was right across the street from a restaurant that had nice sandwiches and beer and it was located a short distance away from a place that served ice cream. I remember thinking that I wanted to have a house that looked and felt like that. And now I actually do, and – I feel – very happy and content.
the words from 2019:
I’ve thought about this idea for at least a year now. These are not original thoughts. Many people have thought them before. Thus, it seemed, not great, to waste time corralling this idea into a narrative, because, it is really just a series of questions.
Experiencing an aesthetic is less exciting than the experience of imagining an aesthetic. Experience is subtle. Experience is uncontrolled. The sounds which create an aesthetic are irregular and we do not choose when they occur. Rain is subject to the rhythms of the wind – the shifting solar pressures of a planet which we do not hold in our hand.
A friend said simply: “Life is not glamourous. My life as a consultant is not glamorous. Life is not an academic TikTok. It is not a stock office photo.” Marketing packages aesthetic, presents an image, tells others. Marketing simplifies complexity to an authentic aesthetic. Marketable authenticity is an aesthetic which forgets that authenticity is beyond complex. It is messy.
The grad school English student aesthetic?
The grad school engineering student aesthetic?
The flying aesthetic?
The water engineer aesthetic?
The dank middle Midwest winter aesthetic?
The southern Great Plains aesthetic?
The aesthetic of the Northland?
I want to feel the aesthetic of the Northland.
The Ivy League theology professor or the Toni Morrison is a goddess aesthetic?
How can we differentiate pursuing excellence from pursuing an aesthetic?
How many aesthetics are acceptable to be combined and packaged into a singular person’s brand?
How can you authentically brand yourself to get a job without constantly falling into the trap of saying, what aesthetic do I fit into?
Are aesthetics a new religion?
Are aesthetics an extension of the postmodern sensate culture of the self?
When one arrives at phrases about cultures of the self and self-centeredness, it is time to look outward.
What kind of person should I be, as a Christian, that part of myself which is beyond myself?
Even then, the summarized sentence, “instead of pursuing an aesthetic, our pursuit should be to come to know God,” has been aestheticized. When I say that phrase, I imagine old men studying books printed with tall 1990s Times New Roman font and the pastor’s wife in the church cinder-block basement, sucking all the fun out of life. In turning from that aesthetic, I imagine awful visits to new churches, the question “how can we serve you,” coffee, Bible journaling.
I guess what I’m trying to say using the aesthetic of a blog post is that my question used to be how does one get out of all the aesthetics and then I realized today when you are out of pursuing an aesthetic and instead you are totally in a moment there is no aesthetic, there is only what is, and you don’t feel what you feel when you look at an acclomeration of aesthetics, instead, you just feel what you are, and how, who, has described that before.
Reading with Ally 